In the food industry, containers that have been filled and sealed in a filling machine are usually supplied to a conveyor belt for further transport to a device for packeting the containers.
Packeting may comprise, for instance, placing the containers in a distribution unit, such as a box.
If the containers are made of a rigid packaging material, such as cardboard, positioning of the containers can be performed by braking a front container, after which subsequent containers are lined up after the braked container while being simultaneously aligned. The rigidity of the container type in combination with its shape promotes said alignment. Subsequently, the aligned group of containers can be placed in the distribution unit by an automated process.
However, a more and more frequently used container is of a collapsible type. Such containers are made of a flexible packaging material and thus do not have the same rigid structure as the above described container type and therefore cannot be aligned and positioned in the way as described above.
To place containers of a collapsible type in a box, manual work or use of a robotised packeting device therefore is required.
These two methods of packeting filled and sealed containers of a collapsible type result in relatively high costs.